Guest Post: Betrayed by Perimenopause

Guest Post by McArthur Krishna. McArthur comes from a pack of storytellers. And while the pack rightly insists she’s only in the running for third-best storyteller on a good day, she’s made her living in stories. Stories in words and visual art that inspire, demand, encourage and cajole us along this wild ride of life. If you know her, she will unabashedly tell your stories too (with some degree of truthiness). Look out.

My predominant feeling was betrayal.

As I had a number of unusual symptoms, I had talked myself into going to the doctor (a thing I hate to do and will only suffer through with the self-promise of a smoothie on the other end). My breasts were sore, I had gained unusual weight, I had missed several periods… but the pregnancy tests said I was NOT. 

What was going on?

Now, I was sitting with the cold vinyl of the examining table sticking to my bare thighs as my doctor patiently explained a word I had never heard before— perimenopause. 

Perimenopause, huh?

Sure, I knew all the societal snickers about menopause— old women having hot flashes etc. etc.

But perimenopause—that I had no idea. Frankly, even the doctor’s words made no sense to me. How could she be speaking about ME? The conditions she was listing made no sense… and to hear perimenopause could be a ten-year process? That sounded insane.

I felt betrayed.

And so, I did what I do when I need to understand something. 

First, I read books. Books and books. But every new book would leave me in a fetal position when I processed just how rotten this could be. There were books on diet, books on science, books on symptoms, books on supplements.  The list of symptoms alone would cover an entire page ranging from the common (headache) to bizarre (skin crawling? ear crystals dislodging?) Hysteria? Hypothyroidism? Heart palpitations? And that was only the H-word listings!

One book said, “women who are so determined to be themselves, they don’t realize how much effort they’re putting into making everything appear normal. Because the symptoms happen slowly and take time to develop, they compensate gradually and don’t realize just how much of themselves they’re losing.” (The Perimenopause Solution, page 33.)

Honestly, I just got pissed. (And I use that word sparingly.)

So, instead of more research, I did what I probably should have done in the first place. I called my friends. We had long talks. I took a road trip across America and every friend I stayed with along the way I opened the conversation by shamelessly asking, “So, perimenopause— what’s it like for you?!?!”

And the stories came rushing out… bursting to be told and understood and shared.  

Women seeking comfort spoke of rage, of pain, of losing their mojo, of losing their minds. Of feeling crazy. Of making those around them crazy.

Husbands and lovers were baffled and tried to be jokey. One husband said, “Sure sounds like Men-on-pause.” Another said, “I don’t even think it’s real.” (That earned him Death-Star-destruction-level glares from all the women present.) One husband joked about multiple wives.

They were not funny. (Ok, maybe the men-on-pause was.)

It was all I could talk about. With anyone who would listen… and even many who did not care to.

And then, I stopped talking about IT. Because, one day, my sweet young seven-year-old said, “Mama, that thing you always talk about? Peri-something? I sure hope I don’t get it.”

In flashed another layer of deeper despair. This sweet child did not need to hear my angst about this “natural body process”. I can’t even say that without dripping it, rolling it, slathering it in sarcasm. (Is this why no one spoke of it to me?) I had spent years cultivating my daughters’ comfort level with their bodies. I hoped it would hold them through their teenage years. I hoped it would hold them for life. (Now, I did not think it would hold them through perimenopause…but, maybe?) I had to stop.

So I kept my betrayal very very quiet. Until today as I write.

It wasn’t just the betrayal of thinking I might be expecting another child to find out I was definitively NOT. It was betrayal after betrayal. The process, I was told, may take up to ten years. TEN YEARS? Ten years of living through betrayal?

It was the betrayal of my body being foreign. 
When I had been pregnant and my body became an unwieldy beast, it was worth it.  (“You are no longer made to be a land animal, my love,” my husband had accurately observed.) I was growing a new life. There was a REASON my body felt it was taken over by an alien. I could roll through it. I had delivered a child and still worn the same clothes since college. I had designed and created embroidery pieces I loved. I had always been healthy and fit enough. I could do things! But now? What was the reason for this? For cramping and weight gain and night sweats and muscle weakness and WHAT WAS MY BODY DOING TO ME?!? 

It was the betrayal of me being often filled with rage. 
I had long been teased by my friends for my annoyingly relentless optimism. They called me “Naturally Happy.” And now? I was often seriously cranky pants. (The books described it as “irritability to anger.”) Understatement. And, then, to look around and realize that, probably, I should have been feeling rage all along. This world treats people like trash… and that DESERVES rage.

It was the betrayal of color. 
I have always been a color girl working in the visual arts. I AM vibrant and alive. But, now.. .was? My wardrobe was a swath of my favorite shades… I was used to shimmying in bold shades that delighted my soul. And now? My skin is changing colors… my hair is changing color… my cheeks are not the shade they once were. I feel… pale. Lifeless in a lack of color. I have heard about the invisibility that comes. And this, this, makes me beyond irritable to land in straight-up ANGER. (Does the anger help ward off the invisibility? Perhaps.)

It was the betrayal of being forced to discuss products. 
Products!  Because I am both cheap and lazy, I had never been a product girl. I shampooed once a week, never blow-dried my hair, and wore lipstick a few times a year. Sunscreen is what I am forced upon myself in a fake dedication to pretending I am an adult. And now, apparently, I needed products to manage my new state of affairs. I wailed to a friend, “But I was always good enough just as me!” And she dryly offered back, “Yes, dear. Did you notice the past tense to that sentence?”

It was the betrayal of just feeling weird all the time. 
Not knowing how to predict where my mood would go. The list of mental and emotional symptoms of perimenopause reads like a case of bad teenage years— irritability, anxiety, depression, dizzy spells, crystals wearing loose in my ears to cause emergency-room-needing vertigo, feeling overwhelmed. (This is not to mock anyone who suffers from these serious conditions… but I had not… until now.) I was living in an almost constant state of discombobulation. 

The betrayal of always being tired. 
Where is the woman who could pound through a day and dance all night? I just feel… depleted.

The betrayal of not sleeping. 
Insomnia… such a simple description of desperate middle-of-the-night sessions where I could loop and spin and slice my mind with all the terrors of the world. I had been known for being able to sleep anywhere, anytime. It was a claim to fame of our genetics. On Sunday afternoons, people stopping by said my family looked like Sleeping Beauty’s castle where everyone was konked out mid-activity… slumped on couches and halfway on chairs and curled up on hardwood floors. I could sleep. But, not know. And so now I spend days bleary-eyed… and even more worn and pale.

It was the betrayal of my mind. 
Did you know twice as many women than men suffer from dementia after post-menopause? The scientists are not quite sure why but they do know it is linked to estrogen and testosterone. . . (or maybe just decades of women being forced to multi-task). I have trusted my mind for a long time. It has been healthy and happy and reliable. Now, I feel my mind may or may not show up on a given day. Or it may not look like anything I recognize on any particular day. I have to look inside and check to see which foreign planet I may have landed on. . . is it going to be a desert wasteland today? A warren of tangled mazes? A skyline like the Tetons? How about the swirls of St. Petersburg’s opulent onion domes? Who knows. I don’t. The old me wants to insert that this could be a positive thing— what amazing creativity juice could geyser out of a new brain experience. I mean, the onion domes are fabulous! But, frankly, the Wasteland of Wraiths of Things I Once Could Remember is a lot more common. Every day there are thoughts lurking on the edge that I can no longer pull into a coherent place. I wonder how much worse this can get.

Betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. I need to know why. And I can’t seem to come up with it.

And the worst betrayal… that I no longer feel like ME. What happens when you have liked yourself for a very long time. . . and you are no longer recognizable to yourself?

***

This post is part of the series Menopause and Me.